How can I create a multi-image collage using php?

Question

I want to create a multi-image collage poster like this one:

Anybody know how to program it in php?

Answer 1

There are lots of examples and tutorials about combining multiple images into one using GD or ImageMagick.

• http://diceattack.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/combining-multiple-images-using-php-and-gd/
• http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/montage/#montage

The image libraries offer you the ability to create, copy, resize, rotate, and manipulate image data; however they don't just automagically know what sort of a montage you want. You have to define your criteria and think about how to go about instructing a program to arrange the photos how you want.

• Are the input images of different sizes/aspect ratios/resolutions?
• Are the input images already rotated and cropped correctly?
• Should all images in the resulting image be of the same dimension? The example you linked includes images of different sizes, but they share common borders, which is a technique that will require some analytical skill to determine how images should fit together.
• What happens if there are many images? Does the output image scale up to compensate? Do the tiled images shrink to fit? Does the program create additional montage "pages?"
• Are the borders always going to be the same color/thickness/etc? Should there be options to alter them? What about spacing between images?

I ask all these questions as examples of things you need to define for your program. (And also to clarify your thoughts when asking others for help.)

If you're learning the image library functions, you should start with a simple task: take two images and combine them into one. You have to at least do this before you can hope to add the sort of complexity that would go into generating mosaics like the one you cited as an example.